[QatzelOk]

what if there's not enough room above-ground to fit enough subways for commuters to comfortably use?

If cars are using the surface, then there must be plenty of room for mass transit which takes up much less space to carry the same number of people.

You're being ideological rather than rational here, House.

[Godstud]

In a busy city where most of the ground above is used by dwellings, a subway is a great idea.
Subways on the ground or above are used by many cities(Light rail Transits) like Edmonton, or like Vancouver, which has a Skytrain. Both work very well but given the structure and size of some cities, they are not going to replace cars. A city would have to have exceptional public transport to be able to be car-free. A city would almost have to be constructed with this thought in mind, to be truly car-free.

[QatzelOk]

A city would almost have to be constructed with this thought in mind, to be truly car-free.

Most cities were constructed before cars.

And the parts that were built around the car don't usually work like cities do/did.

If there's no space on the surface for light rail or a surface metro, then there is no room for cars since cars carry much fewer people per square meter of surface.

[Thunderhawk]

Most cities were constructed before cars.

Few of those cities were large, fewer still had substantial population migration distances to and form work within the city.

[Godstud]

Most cities before cars were very small and thus did not need any public transport to get from one end to the other. Bigger cities were like many small villages combined with rich, poor, middle class, etc. areas that were pretty much their own little communities.
Cities were NOT designed around having public transportation as most were not created thinking they would get that large.

Most cities were constructed before cars.

Roads came before public transportation. Whether cars used them or horses/carriages.

If there's no space on the surface for light rail or a surface metro, then there is no room for cars since cars carry much fewer people per square meter of surface.

The roads are already there and thus changing it from a road system to a LRT/rail, etc. system requires BIG changes.
Subways take this into account and are a good compromise. They are also MUCH quieter than surface vehicles or railways so even in a car-free city a subway system would have its advantages for aesthetic reasons as well as utilitarian ones.

[Dr House]

If cars are using the surface, then there must be plenty of room for mass transit which takes up much less space to carry the same number of people.

Yeah, but you're talking about eliminating the subway as well.

[QatzelOk]

The roads are already there

So God created the roads, but the rail lines would have to be man-made?

What brilliant and astute commentary.

I also liked how cities were all so tiny before cars. Meanwhile, Cordoba Spain had a million people a thousand years ago. And no cars to speak of.

Likewise, most of central Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington and most other cities in the US were built before cars, and worked better without them. They were actually pleasant places to walk and hang out before cars turned them into sewers.

Cities were NOT designed around having public transportation

Even Los Angeles used to have dozens of train lines to get around. What a shame this information has been destroyed in the minds of a media-programmed generation of car-tards.

[Godstud]

Roads were around PRIOR to rail lines, Qatz
People had to live close to their work.

Now it isn't so easy to live near your work unless you are wealthy or lucky.

Calling for a car-free city is absurd unless you have excessive amounts of capital, resources and can change the North American culture.

Most people don't or haven't ever lived in Los Angeles so knowledge of a rail system there is not common knowledge. most people's knowledge of the history of LA would also be minimal. I would, in the same way assume your knowledge of the history of Edmonton to be non-existent but I would not call you retarded for not knowing this. Edmonton too had a rail line but was a small town prior to the automobile. Rail lines were never used as a main method of transportation until an LRT was created in the late 1970s for the Commonwealth Games. You can now consider yourself enlightened.

Your assumption of media-programming is ignorant, at best. Your obvious hatred of cars is making you irrational.

[QatzelOk]

Roads were around PRIOR to rail lines, Qatz

We're talking about car-free cities here, and not road-free cities. In fact, getting cars out of the cities would free up those roads to be public space once again, instead of the private sewers of car-tards.

Now it isn't so easy to live near your work unless you are wealthy or lucky.

That's because the car/oil lobby tore up our cities and relocated us media-numb sheep out to car-dependent suburbs that kill the human soul.

[NYYS]

I don't recall being relocated.

It's simply nicer to have a little land, some trees, some privacy, some quiet, and some freedom out in the suburbs, rather than being stacked on top of each other in the city.

[QatzelOk]

It's simply nicer to have a little land, some trees, some privacy, some quiet, and some freedom out in the suburbs, rather than being stacked on top of each other in the city.

Is the isolation and non-stop driving of suburbia really what "freedom" means to you?

As for the trees/privacy/quiet/little land.... suburban car culture has destroyed all of these. So your text is mainly regurgitated automobile advertising slogans. I guess your point was that "they work."

[Godstud]

If it's what a person wants and they get what they want it has nothing to do with any "elites" or automobile advertising
Many people enjoy driving their car and that doesn't make them any worse than the people who enjoy taking the bus or who enjoy cycling or walking.
Just because you disagree with it QatzelOk, does not make it wrong, nor does it make it the result of some mass conspiracy created by elites who rule the world from star chambers!

Leave that to the Conspiracy Theories section of the forums.

Freedom means doing what I want and not what QatzelOk thinks is freedom for me. I'd personally rather take the extra drive time to have a little more privacy and to live in a nicer area than some over-priced condo in a crime-ridden downtown area just so I can be closer to work and walk/bike.

Freedom means also getting in your car and driving wherever the fuck ya want to drive!

[QatzelOk]

If it's what a person wants and they get what they want it has nothing to do with any "elites" or automobile advertising

If advertising doesn't change what people "want," then why do car companies continue to spend billions of dollars on advertising? Are they stupider than you are, Godstud?

Freedom means doing what I want

Does Freedom still exist when you are brainwashed into a cult? What about when you are exposed to advertising prompts that hijack your instincts most of the day? If corporations wire a radio into your brain and play jingles all day and night, are you still free?

[Godstud]

If advertising doesn't change what people "want," then why do car companies continue to spend billions of dollars on advertising? Are they stupider than you are, Godstud?

You have just proven to me that your argument has no merits as you have turned to insults in order to support it.

You make the blatant assumption that people watch network TV on a regular basis and are swayed by commercials. I don't and am not.
When I purchased my car I was looking for a few things that I wanted in it and researched that. I picked my vehicle based on fuel economy, size, cost, reliability ratings & repair costs. Commercials/advertisingmedia was not in the equation.

Do you know of any in your region?

Or any car-free districts in your city or town?

Do you think it would be a good idea to offer these areas to the public, or is it important that cars be able to travel everywhere?

Your OP mentioned nothing about media brainwashing and was asking intelligent questions. I see now you can't even carry on a discussion without nose-diving into conspiracy theories and entirely removing the logic.

/discussion

[Evilive]

I just saw a Lexus commercial that had these people speeding and turning sharp corners around a city street with agressive facial expressions and the slogan "Liberation through acceleration".

It made me think of Qatz when I saw it.

[QatzelOk]

Thanks, Evilive.

The New York Times also thinks about Qatzel Ok quite a lot.

May 12, 2009, 2:07 pm
Car-Free in America?
By The Editors

A New York Times article this week described efforts in Vauban, Germany, a suburb of Freiburg, to go “car free.” The story mentioned attempts in some American communities to achieve something similar. While walkable communities have become common all over the United States in the last 15 years, going car-free is another challenge altogether. Is this a realistic goal in a car culture like ours? We asked some urban planners, developers and other experts to comment.

* Witold Rybczynski, professor of urbanism
* D.J. Waldie, author of “Holy Land”
* Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture
* Christopher B. Leinberger, real estate developer and author
* Alex Marshall, transportation columnist, Governing magazine
* J.H. Crawford, author of “Carfree Cities”
* Marc Schlossberg, professor of public policy

Going Semi-Carless
Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski is the Martin & Margy Meyerson professor of urbanism at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor at the Wharton School.

New urbanist communities in the U.S. are walkable, but hardly carless. For one thing, they are not nearly dense enough.

There are only six American downtown districts that are dense enough to support mass transit, which you need if you’re going to be carless: New York City (Midtown and Downtown), Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco. That’s it.
...

The New York Times actually did a story on the potential of car-free cities a few days after I started this thread.

I can smell my own hegemony.

---

And here's a list of carfree cities around the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_carfree_places